IRAQ - Kurdish Militants' Iran Front.

A similar battle has been under way on the Iraqi border with Iran. Kurdish guerrillas ambush and kill Iranian forces and retreat to mountain hideouts in north-eastern Iraq. Tehran says Washington aids the Iranian guerrillas, an accusation the US denies. That conflict, like the Turkish one, has explosive potential.

The New York Times on Oct. 22 published an interview with "Salih Shevger, an Iranian Kurdish guerrilla, as he lay flat on a slab of rock atop a 3,000-meter...mountain, with binoculars pressed to his face as he kept watch on Iranian military outposts perched on peaks about six kilometers...away". The paper said: "Shevger and his comrades recounted how they ambushed an Iranian patrol...a few days before, killing three soldiers and capturing another". It quoted "Bayram Gabar, who commanded the raid, and who like all the fighters here uses a nom de guerre", as saying of the Iranian soldiers: "They were sitting and talking on top of a hill, and we approached, hiding ourselves, and fired on them from two sides".

The guerrillas of the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) have been waging an insurgency in Iran and are close to the PKK. Like the PKK, the Iranian Kurds control portions of the craggy, boulder-strewn frontier and routinely ambush patrols on the Iranian side. But while the US calls the PKK terrorist, Iranian Kurdish commanders say PJAK has had "direct or indirect discussions" with US officials. They say PJAK's leader, Rahman Haj-Ahmadi, visited Washington this summer.

The NYT quoted "Biryar Gabar, one of 11 members of the group's leadership", as saying there had been "normal dialogue" with US officials, declining specifics. One of his bodyguards said PJAK officials in 2006 met with Americans in Kirkuk.

Iranian officials have accused the US of supplying the fighters and using them in a proxy war. The paper quoted US military spokesman in Baghdad, Commander Scott Rye of the Navy, as saying: "The consensus is that US forces are not working with or advising the PJAK". It quoted a senior US diplomat as saying there had not been any official contacts with the group and that he was unaware of it having received any support from the US. He said Haj-Ahmadi, while in Washington, did not meet with administration officials.

The PJAK is not regarded as terrorist by the US. The NYT said the PKK and PJAK "appear to a large extent to be one and the same, and share the same goal: fighting campaigns to win new autonomy and rights for Kurds in Iran and Turkey". The paper added: "They share leadership, logistics and allegiance to Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK leader imprisoned in Turkey".

While most Kurds are Sunni, both the PKK and PJAK reject Islamic fundamentalism. They have a Marxist past, still espouse "scientific socialism" and promote women's rights.

After battles between the guerrillas and Iranian forces intensified this year, the Iranian military began shelling border villages in August, sending villagers fleeing and killing livestock. The shelling drew angry criticism from Iraqi leaders. But The NYT reported PKAK guerrillas as suggesting they may have inflicted considerable damage on Iran. The paper added: "While it is impossible to verify the claims, the leader of the PKK, Murat Karayilan, said PJAK fighters had killed at least 150 Iranian soldiers and officials inside Iran since August. And Biryar Gabar said 108 Iranians were killed in August alone".

The PKAK says the intensity of its actions varies with the degree of persecution of Kurds in Iran. PJAK guerrillas have small bases equipped with generators, satellite TV, spring wells and gardens of eggplant, pomegranate, tomatoes and peaches. They have cemeteries to rebury fighters killed in previous years and to prepare for those yet to die. Pictures of more than 100 dead fighters, including women, cover the interior walls of a building inside one cemetery. Up in the mountains, where they stay for a year or more at a time, the fighters subsist on plain soups, tea, rice, beans, water and bread baked in makeshift ovens. They have a few tents and sleeping rolls.

PKAK camps are designed for quick getaways. The guerrillas are adept at hit-and-run tactics, climbing and hiking rapidly over the most challenging terrain. They send small teams into Iran armed with Kalashnikov rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, Russian-made sniper rifles and machine guns.

The NYT Sadun Edesa, 22, as saying of PKAK fighters: "Typically, they will attack a few soldiers at the fringe of a larger group". He said he had been fighting up there for five years. He said that was usually all it took to derail an Iranian operation aimed at rooting out guerrillas Iran. He was part of a four-man ambush team which sneaked into Iran and killed five soldiers before scampering back to camouflaged positions. He said: 'When you hit one of their groups like that, their military operation dies".

At one outpost, the paper said, the guerrillas allowed "a brief interview with the Iranian soldier they say was captured in the ambush described by Bayram Gabar, the PJAK commander", adding: "The prisoner identified himself as Akbar Talibi, a member of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). His uniform bore the guard's insignia..."

The paper quoted former Iranian MP Jalal Jalilizadeh, a Kurd, as saying the PJAK increased its attacks and began singling out IRGC members and assassinating other officials in Iran a year ago. Jalilizadeh estimated Iranian death at around 100 since 2006. He confirmed several recent attacks, including the downing of an Iranian helicopter near the border in September, which killed at least six. Shevger said he led the team which destroyed the helicopter, bringing it down with a fusillade from machine guns and sniper rifles.

The fighting with Iran, he added, "will be worse a year from now". The group now has more than 2,000 guerrillas. Most of them are based in Iran.

The paper said: "Nothing in their demeanor suggests that the guerrillas will soon abandon their fight. But their growing attacks inside Iran this year have put pressure on President Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the dominant political party in the eastern sector of Iraq's Kurdistan, which sees Iran as a crucial trading partner.

PUK-PJAK tension led to a skirmish in August, when fighters crossed the border from Iran and were attacked by PUK's pesh merga. The NYT quoted a PJAK leader as saying he phoned a PUK counterpart who told him the party was "getting pressure from Iran". Talabani told the PJAK to put its weapons down or leave.

The NYT quoted "a senior party official close to Talabani" as saying: "If Iran and Turkey with their huge armies cannot control their borders, how could we do that?"

PJAK guerrillas appear confident, though they fear the Iranian artillery. Edesa, the 22-year-old fighter, spoke with assurance about their capabilities against the Iranians. He said: "They have a level of discipline in them as well. But we are more disciplined. They are a military force, and they live in barracks. But we are a guerrilla force".